


North Carolina

by gotham_ruaidh



Series: Gotham Writes for Imagine Claire & Jamie [101]
Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-27
Packaged: 2019-08-30 04:03:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16757311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gotham_ruaidh/pseuds/gotham_ruaidh
Summary: Brianna tells her parents she has visited North Carolina before. Inspired by 04x03.





	North Carolina

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted at [Imagine Claire & Jamie](https://imagineclaireandjamie.tumblr.com/post/180415400176/north-carolina-a-4x03-one-shot) on tumblr

“Ye may find it a wee bit colder here, now that you’re in the mountains. Definitely much more of a chill at night than in the marshes around River Run.”

Brianna chewed her corn dodger thoughtfully, dipping the remaining half in the piping hot bowl of stew, smiling at her father. “It was so *humid* there. I don’t know how Great Aunt Jocasta can wear all those layers. But I’ve been here to North Carolina before. To this area, in fact.”

“You have?” Claire’s smile widened – she hadn’t stopped smiling since her husband and daughter – her daughter! – had arrived that afternoon. “When?”

Quickly she met her father’s eye, brow raised in a silent question.

“He knows,” he replied softly. “Where – when – ye’ve been. Yer Mam and I told him long ago.”

She coughed. “A few months ago. With Roger. You’ll be glad to know that in 1970, this area hosts the largest Scottish Gathering in the southern United States.”

“So the Scots are still here.” Murtagh mused. “That’s good. Even wi’ the war coming in a few years.”

“I trust that when you were studying history, you covered the Revolution?” Claire asked, only half-teasing. “That information will come in handy now that you’re here.”

“It was yer Mam’s knowledge of the Jacobites that saved the Lallybroch men during the Rising,” Murtagh explained. “She was never wrong.”

“I – it’s been a while,” Bree stammered. “I switched my major to engineering, after you…left.”

“Engineering?” Jamie’s brow – so much like her own – raised in question.

“How things work. Designing and constructing buildings, and bridges, and water and electrical systems.” She turned to Claire. “Does running water exist now?”

“I’ve seen it in Edinburgh and Paris. But not in the Americas.”

She shrugged, returning to her cooling dinner. “Anyway – what’s in this, again?”

“My garden isn’t quite yet up to snuff,” Claire explained, swirling her now-cooling stew in the chipped pottery bowl. “So it’s mostly what I’ve foraged – wild onions, burdock, dandelion greens.”

“Dinna forget the meat, Sassenach.”

Jamie’s ear-splitting grin matched Claire’s own. She sighed theatrically. “All right. Venison. It’s the one protein we have plenty of – unless you like squirrels.”

“I dinna mind the squirrel.” Murtagh licked his spoon. “I’ve survived on far worse.”

Brianna swallowed. “Da told me you were an indentured servant?”

“Fifteen years in the godforsaken Chesapeake. Mosquitos as big as birds. Turtles that would bite yer fingers off. I’ve a good hand wi’ a hoe, but I’m no fisherman.”

“The Chesapeake? I’ve visited Maryland a few times – the crab there is legendary.”

“No’ when it’s all ye have to eat.” Murtagh sat back on the bench, dark eyes squinting in the lamplight. “But it’s a comfort, I suppose, to know that many things dinna change wi’ time after all.”

“Too many things do,” Claire agreed, slipping an arm around her daughter’s shoulders.

Brianna sipped another mouthful of stew. “I like venison. But I didn’t have it very often, growing up.”

“What did ye eat, then? Besides the crabs.”

She smiled at her father – startled at how much his eyes resembled her own. “Mama can tell you – potatoes, and chicken, and pasta with tomato sauce, and hamburgers, and – ”

“Ham – what?” Murtagh’s bushy eyebrows – thick and gray like the tails of winter foxes – furrowed.

“Imagine beef,” Claire explained, “but minced up finely, then patted together into a round shape and cooked over a fire.”

He frowned. “I dinna remember the last time I had beef. And sauce, made from tomatoes? No thank you.”

Brianna laughed. Jamie met Claire’s eyes, then – shining, like his own, with so much happiness.

“It’s much better than it sounds. Especially with cheese on the top.”

“Och! Dinna tease me, lass! What wi’ yer talk of beef and cheese – ye could make a man want to eat a second supper!”

She shook her head, smiling with mock incredulity.

A silent beat, then. The fire crackled in the hearth; outside in his pen, Clarence brayed.

“I hope – I hope ye dinna think me too forward, Breeanah,” Murtagh said slowly. “But when ye smile…ye mind me so much of yer grandmother.”

Brianna straightened in her chair. Claire removed her arm from her shoulders – her hand finding, and intertwining, with Jamie’s on the table.

“Ye do,” Jamie added, voice so soft. “I’m sorry if it’s too much for ye, lass – only. Weel.” He cleared his throat. “We – yer Mam and I, and Murtagh, too – we never thought we’d ever see ye. So to have ye here – to see ye speak, to see how ye move and how ye act – it’s a lot for us to take in. And Murtagh and I – we see so many tiny things in you that mind us of her.”

She reached across the table – laying one hand atop her parents’, and one on Murtagh’s scratchy sweater.

“You know I’m named after her right? My middle name, anyway. She must have been an amazing lady.”

Murtagh nodded emphatically. “She’s been gone these forty years – so to see her again…”

Brianna removed her hand from Murtagh’s sleeve, rummaged in one of her deep pockets – then carefully opened her hand in the middle of the table.

Ellen MacKenzie Fraser’s pearl necklace spilled from her fingers.

Jamie gasped. Claire smiled. And Murtagh – Murtagh choked back a sob.

“Oh lass.” Carefully he drew a pearl between his battered thumb and calloused forefinger, so gentle.

“I gave these to yer Mam on our wedding night,” Jamie rasped.

“That’s what she told me. She said you didn’t have much of anything at the time.”

“Would ye believe I had to find a kilt for him to marry yer Mam in? Fraser colors. He insisted, even though it wasna safe for him to wear it.”

“Why not?”

“I was an outlaw. It was too dangerous.”

“And yet he married me anyway. At a moment’s notice.”

Claire saw Brianna shift a bit uneasily on her chair. Made a mental note to ask her later. But for now –

Murtagh cleared his throat, gently setting the pearls back on the table. “Did yer Mam ever tell ye how I had to sober her up to marry yer Da?”

Brianna snorted. Claire gaped. Jamie shook his head. And Murtagh – Murtagh’s grizzled cheeks glowed bright red with so much joy.


End file.
